Chapter 22 ~ The Boat

Edward Cullen POV

It took me thirty-six hours and seventeen minutes, roughly, to get to my destination and when I did, I could finally breathe.

I could see waves forever.

Atlantic Ocean.  Smelling excellent today.

Most of the trip had my stomach in knots.

Sunshine.  How’s it goin’?

At first I went a little nutters with freedom, ya know? Playing a little rock-n-roll louder than I should have down the I-95 highway, eating at every fast food joint I passed… just ‘cause I could.

Helloooooooo, palm trees.

But then…

Random drunken passed out stranger on the sidewalk… good to see ya.

I started freaking out a little bit when it all started to hit me like a concrete wall in the maze of thoughts I was trying to weave my way through.

Will she be there… won’t she be there… what if she’s not there… what if she IS there…?

I may have stopped to throw up all the Big Macs and taco twelve packs, once or twice.

Okay, three times, but who’s counting?

Not to mention I didn’t have a cell phone yet, and even if I had one, it wouldn’t have done me any good.  I didn’t know Bella’s current number.  Something else Emmett “couldn’t” tell me.

Maybe I should turn back.

I putzed.

I avoided.

I tortured myself, basically.  Pretending to be interested in touristy t-shirt shops, having a beer for lunch, calling it “liquid courage”, eying the bottle of Patron Silver Tequila behind the bartender’s shoulder, wondering if I could do a quick grab N go for the road and drown in my own paranoia.

New life dude. 

My subconscious was right.  I really should pay for the tequila.  And I did.

Funny thing was, and it was killing me… there was a time when I would have been on the Benneteau already.  I would have maybe glanced around to see if my sailing partner had arrived yet and if not, no big… her loss, but now…

Fucking women.

No.  More specifically, fucking Bella.

And I don’t mean the physical kind of fucking, either.

Damn woman had taken my head.  My heart no less. She’d turned everything upside down.  Made me care about her. Love her.  Make sacrifices for her and now look at me.   I was an avoiding, putzing, drunken mess.

Okay I wasn’t drunk. Yet. But still.  I would be.

Sooner or later.

I mean the woman was infuriating at best.  Heartbreaking at worst, and above all else she was…

Standing not twenty feet away from me, haggling with some vendor over the price of shoes.

My breath caught somewhere in the back of my throat as I watched her.  And I became uncomfortably aware that I had some very serious voyeuristic type tendencies when it came to her.

I’d have to explore that later.

Meanwhile, I smiled.

And I tried really fucking hard to settle my heart rate down a little while my feet attempted to move toward her.

One step… that’s all it starts with, Edward.

I took it.  And I took her in as the second followed. 

Her hair was a little shorter.  Lighter even.  She’d pulled it back into a ponytail thing and her skin was tanned.  She’d been there awhile.  Maybe the entire seven months I was locked up. 

And she was there.

She’d waited.

For me.

Another step.  Just take another step.

The closer I got, the more of her I saw, and I took note that she wasn’t hard masked Bella that Marcus Volturi had molded and shaped into a cold, calculating, stone faced bitch just to fuck with me.  You know, the one I’d met in Baltimore eons ago.  

No… she seemed almost at ease with her surroundings and I don’t know… normal.  Whatever the definition of normal was, anyway.

When I heard her voice, it was like being back at our fake home, with our fake cars, and our fake friends… only they weren’t so fake anymore and we weren’t trying to take one of them down a notch or two.

“So you’re trying to tell me this is a Jimmy Choo.”

“Yes.”

“And you want how much?”

“Forty-nine-ninety-nine.”

“Is there some specific reason it says Johnny Choo?”

The dude she was arguing with looked at the label and shook his head.  “Typo.”

“You are so full of shit, you know that, right?”

Twitch.

“No ma’am… not full of shit.  I got them at bargain price.”

“Let me tell you a little something about Jimmy Choo.  Kay?” she told him, pointing the six inch heel of said fake ass designer shoe.  “Anyone in their right mind selling Jimmy Choo wouldn’t ask less than five-hundred.  On sale, asshole.”

She threw the sling back at the guy, who’d noticed me behind her and took the footwear, deciding against furthering his idiocy, and went back into his store. 

Before Bella could make a full turn to leave the establishment in her current state of huffiness, she bumped into me and lost her balance.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled and instantaneously, I was transported back to that airport security line where I’d first heard her say those words to me. 

Funny how it wasn’t quite so annoying to me anymore.

I caught her before she could fall onto her ass from our collision and couldn’t help but grin wider than I already was as I retorted, “You’re excused.”

At first she seemed annoyed.  Ready to throw down after her frustrating shoe clerk encounter, but then… her eyes travelled.  Up the entire, hadn’t had sex since the last time I was with her, in other words, I could have joined the priesthood, length of my body, resting finally on my own eyes and her mouth fell open…. Just the tiniest bit.

Totally sexy.

I really did try hard not to smirk.

Promise.

She didn’t speak.   Which I had to assume was because she was feeling a little bit of the same thing I was at the moment.   

Well, maybe not the exact same thing. I mean, I had a dick that was painfully hard for her.  I’m pretty sure she hadn’t had a sex change operation or anything like that.

I hoped.

No.  No she was definitely still a woman.

With perfect tits and an ass shimmy like no other.

I tucked some hair behind her ear for her, avoiding eye contact after that thought.

“Are you gonna tell me how happy you are to see me, or….?”  I let my eyebrows raise the roof a little, shifting my gaze back to her and she cocked her eyebrow… my eyebrow. 

“Happy?”

Yes.

“Well, I mean that’s what I was hoping for anyway.”  I snickered.

“You…”

“Yeah, Bella, I’m really here.”  She was clearly so emotional about my appearance that she had been diminished to one word phrases.

I was touched.

Until her eyes narrowed at me.

Her entire demeanor changed actually, now that I thought about it.

Uh oh.

“You think I should be happy that you left me… with…” she shook her head as she looked around the immediate atmosphere for words.  “The FB motherfucking I?”

Should I have run for cover?  Maybe.   But I was too busy choking back the laughter that escaped me.  God I was giddy.   She was back!

Her face did that distorted thing she did when she was both annoyed and confused at my reaction to something.  “What are you laughing at?”

I curled my eyebrows up a little. “I’m sorry, Woman-who-wants-to-fuck-me-silly says what?”

“Fuck. You.”  She started off but I stopped her.

“Finger?” I held a hand up and wiggled all five for her. “…or full service?”

She snorted.  But not in a good way.  Then she pushed past me and started walking.  For real this time. “Shut up, Edward.” 

I followed.

“’Cause I know a place...”

“I wouldn’t fuck you right now if you were the…”

“Don’t say something you might regret there, Bambi.”

“Oh my god, the last idiot on Earth.”

People were listening to our conversation as we passed them by. 

Man, could she walk fast.

“Personally, I’m just glad you’re alive, and well, and… clearly living the life while I was holed up in a jail cell for seven months.”

She spun on me.

I loved it when she spun on me.

“Give or take.”

She turned to stalk again after letting out one of her disgusted snorts she liked to let out.

“You think it’s been easy for me here?”

“Well…” I snorted, waving a hand at the glory of Key West.

“I don’t know anyone, I didn’t know if you were getting knifed in jail… or… coming here when you got out… when you’d be getting out…”

I certainly felt her pain on that one.   And I turned a little melancholy.  Frowning a little that she hadn’t been informed very well.   “Emmett didn’t let you know?”

“Emmett doesn’t really tell me much of anything, Edward.”

“Yeah, he’s kinda quirky like that.”

“More like he’s a control freakish government dick.”

I chuckled.

Then stopped in my shoes.

Sandals.

My mandals.

As we’d been walking, I hadn’t noticed, but we were getting closer and closer to the water. Before I knew it, as I chased after Ms. Swan and was bantering away, we were at the boat docks.

I looked up at them.  And found mine. 

Ours.

There was a name painted on the backside of her now.  Something I hadn’t gotten around to doing and I didn’t even try to hide the smile when I saw what Bella’d had spelled out along the stern.

 “You kept her?”

She pulled herself up onto the steps of the boat with the rope that hung there and then turned back to me once she was on the deck.  “Of course I kept her,” she said like it was the most natural thing to do ever.  Like it would never cross her mind to get rid of it. 

I sucked in some air, unexpectedly.

Now who’s getting emotional?

Bella disappeared and I pulled myself up, taking in the familiar place where I’d had many a drunken stupors the last time I’d been there. 

It was good to be back.

Especially this time, because now, things were different.

They were very much the same, but different.  Bella was there.  I was there.  And we didn’t have anything holding us back anymore.  No one blackmailing us into committing crimes… no jail wardens telling me when I could eat, drink… shit… nothing to distract us from having a real live adult uncensored relation…ship.

Fuck.

Talk about scary.

I was falling into a daze, staring out at the waves hitting boats that lined the dock we were slipped into and hadn’t noticed her reappear in the doorway leading down below.

Her voice was soft.  Anxious.  Dripping with sex. “Ten dollars says you can’t make me forget what it was like to wonder if I’d ever see you again.”

My body turned so I could see her face.  Her eyes were still those same eyes I remembered.  They spoke volumes without all the stupid bullshit details most people felt the need to mull over.

“Are you challenging me, Betty?”

Her lips curled upward in the most seductive way as she unbuttoned a single button of her shirt for me. 

“I think I’d like to call it testing you.”

Tah….witch… ah.

Now if I was someone like, say, Ferris Beuller?  This is where the camera would stop on just me and I’d give you some long as fuck ridonkulous speech about what this woman means to me and what I planned on doing with her for the rest of my life.

Me?  I don’t have time for that shit and it had been way too goddamn long since my dick had quality play time with Bella’s pussy.

So things moved a little quickly after that.

And a little awkwardly.

“Jesus… fuck I missed you,” I told her, searching her entire upper body with my lips, my tongue, my teeth in some cases.  My hands?  Faggedaboutit.

Fuck me.  Fuckme-fuckme-fuckme-fuckme.

“I missed your mouth… your mouth was very much missed,” she breathed back.

And can I just say, it is really fucking hard to make out and fit foreplay into the sixteen inch space between the walls leading down to the private area of the boat.

We tried spinning a couple of times to try and get just the right spot of comfort without tripping ourselves up.  Bella against the wall, me against the wall, Bella below, carrying Bella… not a good idea by the way, not when you haven’t had much practice in almost a year… in other words, none of it really worked and if I hadn’t been so goddamn horny, I’d a been really fucking pissed about it all. But seeing how it didn’t take long to get to the bed, I wasn’t exactly complaining so much.

More than just a few womanly giggles escaped Bella in the process and her overzealousness was contagious, to say the least.

I barely noticed that she’d pulled the shades already and lit a few candles that smelled like something really girly for some ambiance, but what I did notice was that there was the world’s largest sized dildo, complete with clit stimulation extension and rotating beads with three speeds to choose from.

It was lying on the pillow to one side of the rumpled blankets.

She no doubt had zero house cleaning priorities and I laughed, picking it up to show her I’d seen it.

“Lonely much?”

“Not anymore,” she told me, taking it away from me and throwing it off of the bed altogether as she pulled me down with her and I finally found the opportunity to kiss her hello properly.

Hello tongue.  It’s been a while.

Hands groped, buttons flew, and I’m pretty sure more than one article of clothing was harmed in the undressing process, but really… who was gonna give a shit?  I didn’t give a shit.  I knew that much.

And when all that was between us, finally, was bare skin and sensitive nipples and yeah, okay, one exasperatingly hardened dick, I grasped Bella by the waist and pulled her down the length of the bed for better positioning purposes, then pulled at her thigh, hitching her leg up to my hips.

She wriggled a little, itching for some friction, so as I looked down at her, lying beneath me, beautiful as ever, if not more, and ready to go, I tried to take a moment to just appreciate her.  To relish a little in the fact that she’d fallen for me just as hard as I’d fallen for her and that she’d sacrificed too.

She had given up her own freedom for mine, she put up with Marcus while I was gone and, when I came back for her, she told me she trusted me. 

That she’d have left then and there, and then to boot, when the shit hit the fan and I was going to jail, even though she didn’t have to cooperate with Emmett, she did, eventually anyway, and she’d stayed.

Here, on the boat, in the Keys of Florida… for me.

“I love you,” I told her and then I licked my fingers a little and let my hand fall down between us, finding her hot and wet and ready as always but I pretended anyway.  That she needed me.  Even when it was clear she didn’t.

I dipped my fingers into her and her hips rolled as her eyes closed and she made one of the best sounds I’d heard since Austin, Texas. 

She felt so goddamn good. 

All of her.

Not just feeling her the way I was, but everything.

Her breasts when they pushed up against me, her legs around me, and her hands when they touched me.  And her voice when she spoke to me.

It was all just… not to be taken for granted again.  Ever.

Everything I’d given up on finding.  It was all wrapped up in her.

And I was sincerely making the whole taking my time our first time together again thing really hard with all the inner thought processes and then I thought, fuck it all.  We had forever.  So I gave up on taking it slow and I pulled my fingers out, winning me a disapproving look from Miss Swan, but then she forgave me when I teased her a little, sliding my dick up against her slickness.

I almost came right then and there.

And listen, no judging.  It’d been a while, remember?

“Just push into me, Edward, I can’t take this I want to explore every inch of your body before I fuck the living shit out of you BS anymore.”

I laughed and told her, “Fine.”  And then pushed into her, just like she’d requested and I was a goner as far as holding out for any sense of control.  Hell, she didn’t want control anyway.  She wanted me.  She wanted us.

And we weren’t exactly your run of the mill, controlled burn bullshit couple now… were we?

We were more like your no-underwear-wearing-rogue-pinky-ass-playing-cock-teasing-bad-ass-ex-con-got-ourselves-out-of-a-bad-situation-bantering-like-we-hate-each-other-on-a-daily-basis couple.

Definitely.

I got a little over exited when she pulled herself up a little to kiss me and Bella’s head rammed the wall of the “bedroom”.

“Ow.  Fuck.”

I laughed.  I mean, how could I not? 

“Sorry.”

She laughed too, don’t feel too bad, and after she was done rubbing the sore spot, she announced under no uncertain terms, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat, Edward.”

We were gonna need more than that, but we’d cross that bridge later. “Agreed.”

Each time I slid into Bella, it came with more force, more urgency, more need and want and fuck… I wanted it to last forever and I wanted it to end.  Ya know what I mean?  So we could regroup and try it again.  In another position.  Another room.  Not that we had many on that forty footer. On another dock in another state… another region… On another continent even.

I wanted her everywhere and every way.  Every goddamn day.

Our orgasms snuck up on the both of us.  Sensitivity from too many months apart, I suppose, even with the vibrator on Bella’s side.  When she came, her back arched and as I came, she said, “I love you, Edward Cullen.”

Now, seriously.  Try cumming inside a woman you’d loved since the day you set eyes on her and have her say that shit into your ear.

Dude.

It’s number one on the list of, I really gotta fucking experience that shit again.

And again and again and again… until the day I die or she gets sick of me.  Whichever comes first.

“I could use another orgasm like that one,” she said breathlessly afterward.

“Give me ten minutes.”

After giving me shit for not being able to handle her womanly sex drive, Bella found a comfortable spot to the side of me, let her head rest against my chest, and wrapped an arm around my midsection, squeezing a little bit while she waited for me to regroup.

Her foot bounced against mine softly, and I swear to the stars I could almost hear her having a silent conversation with my dick, saying “if you don’t harden up in exactly five seconds I’m moving on to the dildo, dude.”

Come onnnn… dick.

I played with her hair to distract myself from over thinking that shit and then, like all other silent moments I’d had over the past seven months, fucked up shit popped into my head about… life.

“I’m sorry, Bella.”

I was saying it for so many reasons.

She rolled over on top of me, giving me a curious look.   “For?” she asked, trailing hot Bella Swan kisses along my torso and stomach.

Mother of Titan, her lips felt good.

I shrugged.  “For Charlie, for leaving you alone… for Marcus.”

She stopped to look up at me.  Then folded her arms across my stomach and let her chin rest on top of them as she watched me.  “Marcus wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not,” I told her.  “But I’m sorry anyway.”

Her head tilted and then a few minutes later her head popped up like she’d forgotten something highly important and she jumped off of the bed.  Naked as a jay bird to go up onto the deck.

“Uh!  Bella!  You’re not wearing any clothes!”

“I completely forgot to tell you!” she screamed from up above, and I could hear banging and knocking and fumbling. 

I almost got up to go see what in the hell was going on, when she came back downstairs with two huge suitcases that she could barely get down the steps.

“We goin’ somewhere?”

She smiled an evil smile and dropped one of them to the floor, then used all her might to swing the other one up and onto the bed.

“Bella, if there’s a dead body in there…”  Please do not let there be a dead body in there.

“Shut up, there’s no dead body.”

Thank fuck.

She closed the door for some privacy and came back to sit on the bed with me before she unzipped the suitcase.

When it opened, I gawked.

My eyebrows lifted, my mouth dropped, and I’m pretty sure I made some kinda noise in there somewhere, too.

You’ve gotta be shitting me.

“I’m not shitting you.”

I managed to look over at Bella to question where she’d gotten an entire full sized, if not over sized, suitcase… two actually… full of hundreds and possibly even thousand dollar bills. She looked about like she’d just scored a hot deal on her favorite shoe maker’s latest line of formal wear.

“I hacked Marcus’ offshore account before anyone from the government had a chance too.”

Kid in a candy store.  I’m tellin’ ya.

I looked back at the money.

Then back to Bella.

“Bella, we can’t…”  Can we?

“What?  I only took what was yours.”  She shrugged.  “Plus interest.” 

Can we do this?

“And Emmett hasn’t said anything?”

She shook her head.

“No one noticed this?”

“I’m pretty sure they had no idea how much money Marcus really had in total… and he probably kept what he’d taken from you off the books.”

I gaped.  A little.

“It’s completely untraceable.  I swear.”

Wow.

We can totally do this.

But aside from that… She stole.  From Marcus.  My money, granted, but still.  She fucking hacked into his overseas accounts and stole.  From Marcus.

She really loved me.

I was in the middle of looking quite dumbfounded when she took some of the money and threw it at me.  “Ready for round two?”

I pulled her on top of me, letting her find the answer to that question herself.

Later on… after round four and a little bit of begging on my part because of a sore dick and tired sperm, I threw on some shorts and Bella threw on my shirt, then we took some shot glasses and the Patron I’d bought earlier up onto the deck.

We played our game, shot for shot, getting to know each other a little better outside of cons and thievery.  And as we experienced questions that we were still both a little apprehensive about sharing the answers to, I thought about Marcus and all he’d done to the two of us and countless others, for that matter, over the years.

How much he deserved to be in that jail cell somewhere along the coast of California, calling some big ugly dude, “daddy” for the rest of his natural born life.  Hopefully.

“I hope he rots in that jail cell,” I said to the sea mostly, but Bella too, as I downed the burning alcohol.  Not that it burned anymore.  I was mostly numb, actually.

Bella laid her head against my shoulder, looking out at the waves with me, then said in a soft voice, “We owe him a lot.”

I scowled.

She held her shot glass up to the sea.  “Here’s to you, Marcus.”

Uh….

I sat up, forcing her to sit up straight as well.  “Come again?”

She shrugged me off, pouring herself another drink as we listened to the steel drum band play off in the distance somewhere.  “I’m just saying… if Marcus hadn’t been such a cunning and manipulative bastard, I’d have never watched my father spiral because of him, or been lured into his life of shit or learned to defend myself properly… been thrown into circumstances I never would have known how to handle before, or been forced to work on just one more job before getting to visit my father… have him killed…”  she paused for a few moments after that one but then finished.  “But mostly, after all…. that… I would have never met you.”

Did she have a way with words, or what?

I was still stuck in, “Say what?” land though.

“Edward, if it weren’t for Marcus, I’d have never found you, I’d have never….” she trailed.

I got it.

She was right.  I’d thought that same thing almost to myself many nights throughout my stay in jail.  I refused to make him the hero though.  Not for this.  So I pretended we were fated.  That we would have happened no matter what the circumstances.

“You’d a found me… you just wouldn’t have liked me so much,” I teased.

And she teased right back.  “I might have liked you more.  And in less time, even.”

“You mean love,” I corrected.

“Excuse me?” 

I smirked before saying it again.  “You love me.”

She blushed.  “I do.”

I smiled.  And then reclined back into my seat and looked back out at the waves.  “You know, it’s legal for the captain of a ship to marry a couple.”

“Oh yeah?”

I checked on her out of the corner of my eye.  Then I nodded.

“Are you asking me to marry you, Edward Cullen?”

“We’re already married in my opinion; I’m simply suggesting we do it… you know… for proof.”

“Proof.”

“Yeah, you know… so we can get a stupid piece of paper to say we’re gonna be together forever.”

Bella’s drunken giggles.  I love ‘em.   She remembered.  I was quoting her.

“Well then.”  She sat up again and took my hands, making me turn for a more comfortable position.  She looked me straight in the eyes and dared me to question her.

Was she doing what I thought she was doing?  Or was she about to tell me I was completely off my rocker for even remotely thinking she would ever marry?

“Do you, Edward Cullen not Masen, take me to be your ship mate and right hand, to fuck up against walls when I want it, and make spaghetti with meatballs every Saturday night for as long as I say so?”

Oh, she was doin’ it alright.

I mighta drunk giggled my damn self at that point.  I don’t know.

And I was totally game for this.

“And do you, Bella Swan not Masen, promise never to leave me stranded at dry dock, to always leave the bedroom door open, and to never ever wear underwear to neighborhood bar-b-q’s, just so I can get a little finger fucking action?”

We laughed and when we could, we said it together.  “I do.”

The laughter stopped.  The smiles disappeared.  Then I leaned in.  And I kissed her.

My hands were still in hers but she released them to go find more interesting areas to explore and she inched forward so she was straddling me.

No. Underwear.

Mother of…

We made out on the deck of the boat that night.   And then some.

Like teenagers who hadn’t been strong armed into lives of conning.  Like we hadn’t known real love before that moment and would never risk losing each other, no matter what.  And didn’t really give a rat’s ass if the “neighbors” noticed or not.

It was the official ending to a previous life, the beginning of a new one, and the continuation of a love story that people would envy for years to come, in my opinion.

It wasn’t ideal, the way we’d come together, but it was perfect none the less, and I was a lucky bastard for the whole of it.  Despite the little details.

There was a moment during the night when we were laying in one of the deck loungers together, staring out at the stars, just enjoying the fucking quiet.  The boat was rocking softly, bumping up against the dock tie, and we suddenly wondered why we were still there.

Docked.

On a boat.

With zero ties to hold us back.

So we packed up some things and early the next morning, before sunrise or any living soul was up, we pulled anchor and left port.

But not before I stuffed a few hundred dollar bills into an envelope and mailed it off to one Emmett McCarty.

I told him we’d call when we settled somewhere and to give everyone our best.

We had no idea where we were heading, but we were together, we had money, and we were free to do whatever the hell we felt like doing and go wherever the fuck we wanted to go.

“I hear Mexico is great this time of year,” Bella told me as we pulled out into the Atlantic Ocean and dry land became smaller to the eye.

Breathing was so much easier out on the ocean.

It was a million times easier with Bella next to me.

I turned the corners of my mouth down, put an arm around her to pull her in close as I steered the “Anti-suburbia” East-ward.

“Mexico’s for the inexperienced newb,” I told her.  “I was thinking more along the lines of… Italy.”